Alibaba unveils its most powerful AI model yet amid China’s intensifying AI race

China’s Alibaba on Monday unveiled what it said is its largest and most capable artificial-intelligence model, the Qwen3.8-Max, which is not far behind in size when compared with an offering from domestic rival Moonshot AI launched last month.

Chinese tech companies — a huge force in open-weight AI models globally — are locked in a fierce and fast-moving battle to build more powerful systems without making them prohibitively expensive to run.